“Think you just killed Char,” Chass said.
“You’re an idiot, challenging them one-on-one,” Nath replied amicably. Bold, but still an idiot. T5 was doing its best to filter out the other voices on the open channel—the attempt didn’t work well, but it was better than nothing. “You hear the message?”
“Yeah,” she said.
He opened the Y-wing’s throttle again, circling back to the path they’d been taking to the Yadeez. The B-wing followed. They could still see the madness of the battle—the catastrophic clash of Dreadnoughts; the plasma storm of weapons fire over Jakku; the streaks of Shadow Wing’s TIE fighters; the dying Deliverance—but for a few seconds they were englobed by something resembling tranquility.
“Figure he’s gone?” Chass asked.
“Yeah.”
One of the Shadow Wing pilots was screaming a name, over and over: Phesh. Phesh. Nath wondered if that was the pilot he’d just killed.
“We doing this?” Nath asked.
“You think he’d want us to?”
The question took him aback—he’d assumed Chass was game for a suicide run. He tried to imagine what Wyl would say; whether the kid would really want them to sacrifice themselves to stop Shadow Wing from killing yet another ship.
His thoughts were interrupted by a whine from the comm. The working parts of his console showed T5’s attempts to filter and enhance a signal, and eventually Nath heard words:
“Proceeding through cloud cover—” Then a pause, and then a second voice, guttural and accented: “They see her. I will try to help.”
The transmission ended. Chass began laughing. “Guess they’re doing okay.”
“Or were, whenever that signal went out,” Nath agreed.
“You think she’d want us to?”
That was easier to picture. Wyl might’ve hesitated at the thought of his friends going out in a blaze of glory, especially in a war he thought was no longer worth fighting. Then again, the immediacy of the problem might’ve swept aside his reservations.
Yrica Quell, though? She always saw her missions through.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “You still up for it?”
“Sure. Almost like going in as a team.”
Nath shook his head and let the sound of pilots laughing and snarling and screaming fill his cockpit, heading off to lead his ships on one last bombing run.
V
They danced together and they danced apart. The TIEs came squadron by squadron instead of swarming the skyways, and with each wave Quell and Keize parted and fought for their lives before reuniting just long enough to be separated again.
They spoke in shorthand, identifying incoming marks and claiming their targets when there was ambiguity. Quell was glad for the limits of their conversation, at least at first—the battle left her breathless. Keize never warned her when a TIE locked on, nor did she warn him when strikers tried to flank him; they took care to avoid collisions or other accidents, and that was the extent of their alliance.
Throughout, Quell glimpsed crimson and emerald among the clouds. Kairos might have been holding off a fleet, and Quell was grateful.
As the TIEs pursued her into the city depths, it occurred to Quell to surrender. If she gave up, the Empire would be able to concentrate on her mentor. They might stop Keize, and stop the dying, and she would be no worse off than she had been many times before—locked in a cell, awaiting her execution. But the Empire hadn’t responded to her attempts to make contact and besides, if she could survive them surely Keize could, too.
Her best chance—her only chance, maybe—was persuasion. Even though she’d never changed his mind before, any more than she’d managed to outfly him.
“Colonel?” She raced through clouds of flame, leaving burning TIE parts tumbling into the city-chasms. (She tried not to think of the TIEs’ pilots protecting their besieged world; the debris that fell kilometers, jagged and deadly, as debris had fallen onto Pandem Nai.) “Please respond.”
The X-wing slipped among the darkened towers. Somehow she’d found her way layers beneath the upper strata, into a region where entertainment venues stood barred and anti-Imperial graffiti covered high-end clothiers.
“I hear you,” Keize said. Through her comm she heard the snap of blaster cannons and the booming of smashed metal and displaced air. “You fly well, Lieutenant. Though the fighter is new to me.”
“Just Quell, now. Or Yrica.” She wrinkled her nose and winced at the pain. “Where are you?”
“If I tell you—” For an instant she detected strain in his voice. There was another snap from his cannons; another explosion. “—it will only end badly. Approach and I will fire on you.”
“I know,” she said. “Tell me anyway.”
She needed to orient herself. The city was a three-dimensional maze, and she’d lost any sense of where the battle had begun or how to reach the Verity District. She’d barely touched her console when her astromech loaded a map onto the screen. She mouthed Thank you and flew on, the fighter’s vibrations like a caress.
“Part of me would very much enjoy that duel,” Keize said. “Unfortunately, I can’t afford the time. Coruscant’s defenders are only harrying us so they can reinforce the Palace and surround the entire district; once they approach in force, they’ll discover the limits of my skills.”
“You are out of practice,” she said, and he laughed.
Stop it. You don’t get to banter. He’s not here to help you.
“You’re going to destroy the data bank,” she said. “How?”
The joy left his voice, as it had hers. “Surgical excision. The data core is directly beneath the upper level of the Verity District. What’s the swiftest way, do you think, to ensure its destruction?”
She took the X-wing down swiftly enough to ignite silver sparks at the edge of her vision and pulled into a rusting industrial level of catwalks and cranes. The TIE fighters wouldn’t find her if she went deep enough into the city, and she could conceal her approach when she located Keize.
She considered his question. “Destroy the support structures. One TIE won’t have the firepower to do serious damage to the data bank, but dropping it hundreds of levels to the ground would make it impossible to recover.”
“Good,” he said. “Cutting the supports may not suffice—central repulsors provide an antigravity lift as a safety mechanism. But an able soldier could detonate those manually. After a thousand-level drop, anything salvaged from the ruined data bank would be suspect. So much of the data would need to be reconstructed that nothing could be considered trustworthy; no one could use it as a weapon against those who had served the Empire.”
She was beneath the Verity District now. She looked for a gap in the structural web above her and spotted a cargo turbolift attached to the side of a tower, large enough to carry a freighter. She pulled up hard, felt her weight settle against her seat, and shot skyward.
She sped past a blur of turbolift stops and abandoned checkpoints. Then she saw the underside of a data sphere, illuminated with security lights and armored thicker than a warship, and knew she’d arrived. Before she could proceed green fire flashed on her starboard side and she slammed a rudder pedal to avoid the worst of the hit; even so, particle bolts splashed her deflectors and sent her into a spin. She gripped her control yoke as she rolled, bouncing in her harness, and tried not to slam into the sphere even as Keize swept behind her.
“I told you I would fire,” he said.
“I’m not offended,” she managed, and fled from her mentor.
In an oxygen-thick atmosphere, trapped in tight urban quarters, she had no advantage over a TIE when it came to speed; likewise maneuverability, even in the T-70 prototype. She looped around towers; slid to one side using repulsors and cut thrust, hoping in vain Keize would shoot past her; s
he led him through an obstacle course of floating military droids in low-power mode. She didn’t shake him and he fired only when he was nearly certain to hit, battering her shields and scarring her wings.
That had always been the worst thing about drills with Keize—the interminable waiting between shots, knowing that when you heard the sound of cannon fire he was sure to have you.
She found her voice despite the stress. “If you do this, do you know how many people will die? How many people live in the undercity levels you plan to drop buildings on?”
“I do,” Keize said. “Not precisely, but I’ve run estimates.”
“Then you know—”
There was emotion as he interrupted—a hint of bitterness and frustration he hadn’t shown prior. “I know that all of us—Imperial and rebel—have sacrificed civilians any number of times, and this is no different. I know the price, Yrica—tens of thousands or more on the levels below, in exchange for billions.”
He fired another volley as they slipped from Verity’s underside into clear sky. This time his shots went wide, and she wasn’t sure if she’d shaken him or if he was trying to goad her into outdistancing him so he could turn and head back to his target alone.
She plunged back among the buildings and lost sight of the clouds again. “What billions?” she asked, though she knew the answer.
“We’ve spoken too often to pretend. The Emperor’s cruelty touched everyone in his service—not just troops, but every package-sorter and educator and bureaucrat on thousands of worlds. How many of them compromised their ethics to avoid rebuke or protect their families or out of pure expediency? It was the design of the Empire to compromise its servants, so that we were bound by guilt. So that the noblest among us would commit wretched acts, and cease hesitating when atrocities were asked of us.”
“Because the guilty are easy to control. I know.” She dived down a gap between towers; she tried to calculate the X-wing’s weight distribution compared with a TIE’s. “But fifty thousand dead civilians aren’t the same as an uncertain future for—”
“The future is not uncertain. You know the consequences if the New Republic acquires those records. You know the ruin that will result as the sins of billions are exposed, you’ve seen New Republic justice—”
She cut her thrusters, switched off her repulsors, and went into free fall. The X-wing tumbled forward and she groaned as her harness saved her from smashing into her canopy. She couldn’t counter the dizziness—all she could do was ride the wave, and when the weight of her reactor flipped the starfighter over, oriented her nose toward the sky, she slammed a palm on the console again, reigniting her thrusters as she squeezed her firing trigger.
Energy blazed from her cannons and Keize’s TIE, still descending toward her, nimbly avoided each bolt. A single blast left a scar across one of his wings; then he was below and behind her.
“Artfully done,” he said. “But my point stands.”
She was halfway back to the upper levels when she realized he wasn’t pursuing. He’d disappeared among the buildings, and she couldn’t guess whether he was planning another ambush or returning to Verity via another route.
“Suppose,” he said, “the New Republic seeks justice with all those others as it did with you. Suppose, through some miracle, the tribunals are almost fair. Imagine how many former Imperials will nonetheless live in fear of being hauled away for decades-old crimes. How many soldiers will wonder when some functionary will publicize their records, resulting in mobs descending on their homes and families?
“There can be no goodwill in such a galaxy. No union under a new government. At worst, such resentment could provoke terrorism and civil war such that a few thousand dead civilians on Coruscant would seem trivial indeed.”
She couldn’t have argued even if she’d had the words. Another squadron of TIE strikers had arrived and she was caught in the fray, attempting to outpace and outmaneuver her attackers on a battlefield they knew better than she did. Keize went silent—she suspected he, too, was beset by opponents—and she evaded attack after attack, flew into depths so dimly lit that two of the TIEs behind her activated their lights and painted themselves as easy targets.
As she flew, static built on her comm and took the shape of voices. She caught snippets that could’ve been Chass na Chadic and another that could’ve been Jeela Brebtin. Somewhere across the galaxy, Alphabet Squadron and Shadow Wing were locked in combat, too.
Someone declared that the Deliverance was going down and Quell suppressed a flinch.
“Protect your own,” she hissed. “Stay together. They’ll try to split you but you know how to fight with each other.”
She could’ve been talking to Alphabet or Shadow Wing.
Keize’s voice interrupted her thoughts. He announced a set of coordinates and she understood, changing direction and heading back toward Verity. The TIEs chased her and as she emerged from a narrow skyway she spun abruptly to one side. Keize’s TIE, headed toward her, slid on its repulsors in the opposite direction, and his pursuers collided with her own at the position Keize had cited. The strikers tore apart and burned and fell under the shadows of the data spheres.
“You’re getting a feed from Jakku?” Keize asked.
She glanced to her console. She’d left the channel open to Keize even as the transmission had come in. “I am.”
“They’re dying, aren’t they?”
His tone had softened, and as they spun their fighters about, heading toward each other, neither took the opportunity to fire.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.” The TIE came closer, and she could see into its cockpit—see the silhouette of a man in a black flight suit, like so many anonymous pilots she’d killed and fought beside. “I’m sorry you felt compelled to come after me and leave them. But consider this: For those who survive, wiping the slate clean is the only way to bring peace. If a record of the Empire’s sins exists, it will breed violence for decades.”
Quell wasn’t sure which one of them shot first, but the air filled with charged particles and death.
CHAPTER 23
THE BREAKING OF THE GUILTY
I
For a second, Nath thought, we were almost having fun.
Vitale didn’t play games anymore. General Syndulla was silent, if she was still alive. Shadow Wing made no threats and didn’t ask about Wyl Lark or Yrica Quell. The voices on the open comm came rhythmic and somber as a drumbeat:
“Jothal Gablerone.”
“Fra Raida.”
“Neihero.”
“Sata Neek.”
They’d seemed to realize together that an end was approaching. The recitation of the dead—rebel and Imperial—pounded at Nath as his Y-wing trembled and Flare and Wild intercepted barrages aimed at his bombers. T5 was making buzzing, staccato squawks Nath couldn’t remember hearing from the astromech ever before.
“Nord Kandende.”
“Denish Wraive.”
“Gorgeous Su.”
As TIEs and New Republic fighters circled the bomber phalanx, missiles streaked toward the bombers from the Yadeez. Soaked in Chadawan radiation, their nav systems blinded, they flew straight and blew seemingly at random. In an atmosphere the shock waves might have thrown Nath off course; in deep space the explosions rocked the Y-wing, forced him to grip his control yoke and straighten his path, but did little damage.
A direct hit would still kill him instantly. Even shrapnel from a missile casing might puncture a vital system—his shields were flickering and had become essentially ornamental. But the light show was impressive.
“Palal Seedia.”
“Tulana Tuluith.”
How many names till he reached the bulk freighter? Twenty? Thirty? Hail and Alphabet chased the Yadeez as it crawled toward the pale shape of a Starhawk.
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Flare and Wild should’ve gone ahead to harry the Yadeez, slowing it so the bombers could catch up more easily. But there weren’t enough pilots left, and the two squadrons had their hands full keeping the TIEs from killing them all.
“Garmen Naadra.”
“Ubellikos.”
“Shol Mordeaux,” Nath said as his turn came around. It wasn’t a name he’d planned to say.
He thought back to Trenchenovu—he’d been thinking too much about Trenchenovu, but the shipyard battle where he’d lost his first squadron felt within his grasp. The rage and fear of that day were kept from the forefront of his brain only by the thinnest barriers of memory and time. He recalled the thirst for vengeance that had driven him to join Alphabet Squadron (along with money, true); he recalled murdering Grandmother at Pandem Nai, exacting retribution from the woman who’d ordered his crew destroyed.
“Shay Darita.”
“Mervais Gandor.”
Meteor Squadron. Most of Hail Squadron. Wyl Lark.
Since Pandem Nai he’d lost enough comrades that vengeance was almost worthwhile again. The thought it might get him killed was infuriating.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” he snapped, “but anyone who wants to see that souped-up freighter burn? You’re about to get the chance.”
He thought he heard Chass laugh. Otherwise the names kept going.
The closer they got to the Yadeez, the better the freighter aimed. Missiles ripped through the void barely a meter from Nath’s cockpit; close enough that even the TIEs were giving the bombers a wider berth. That was useful—to a point—but Nath didn’t find it comforting.
He picked his target: the front of the freighter’s port nacelle. The density of the particle cloud was rising and most of his console had gone dark; he figured he’d be lucky to get off one shot before his systems failed entirely. He kicked his thrusters to maximum output and set a course over the freighter’s back, hoping he wouldn’t run straight into a missile.
Victory's Price (Star Wars) Page 40
